Italian Formula One driver dies in crash

Author

Website Name

Year Published

Title

URL

Access Date

February 22, 2018

Publisher

A+E Networks

On this day in 2001, 44-year-old Italian race car driver Michele Alboreto is killed on a track in Germany during a test drive. Alboreto collected five Grand Prix wins on the Formula One (F1) circuit, where he competed during the 1980s and early 1990s, and also claimed victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in 1997.

Michele Alboreto was born in Milan, Italy, on December 23, 1956, and began his racing career in the mid-1970s. He made his F1 debut in 1981 and took home his first victory at the Caesars Palace Grand Prix Las Vegas in 1982. From 1984 to 1988, Alboreto drove for the Ferrari team, the first Italian to do so in more than a decade. In 1985, his most successful year, he won the Canadian Grand Prix and the German Grand Prix and came in second place for the F1 drivers’ championship behind the iconic French driver Alain Prost, who collected the crown again in 1986, 1989 and 1993.

Referred to as the world’s richest sport, Formula One is an elite level of racing in which competitors drive highly sophisticated and technologically advanced single-seat, open-wheel vehicles capable of speeds surpassing 230 mph. These cars are typically built by large automakers, including Porsche, Ferrari and Toyota, who are known in the racing world as “constructors.” Formula One racing is governed by the Fédération International de l’Automobile (FIA), which in 1950 named its inaugural world championship driver and constructor.

After departing Ferrari, Alboreto drove for other teams before eventually leaving the F1 circuit after the 1994 season. In 1997, he and two teammates won the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, driving a Porsche. Le Mans, along with the Rolex 24 at Daytona (formerly known as the 24 Hours of Daytona) and the 12 Hours of Sebring, is considered part of the Triple Crown of endurance racing, a sport that tests the stamina of both car and driver. The Le Mans, France, race was first run in 1923, while the inaugural Sebring race was held in 1952, at the Sebring International Raceway in Florida. The Daytona event began in 1962 as a three-hour competition at Florida’s Daytona International Speedway.

In March 2001, Alboreto won the 12 Hours of Sebring, competing in an Audi. One month later, on April 25, he died at the Lausitzring (now known as the EuroSpeedway Lausitz) in Germany after the Audi R8 sports car he was test-driving at high speed suffered a tire failure and crashed.

Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

Also on this day

On this day in 1983, the Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine, inviting her to visit his country. Andropov’s letter came in response to a note Smith had sent him in December 1982, asking if the...

On this day in 1781, British General Lord Charles Cornwallis retreats to Wilmington, North Carolina, after being defeated at Guilford Courthouse by 4,500 Continental Army soldiers and militia under the command of American Major General Nathanael Greene.
With Cornwallis’ defeat, the British task of defending North Carolina fell to a young...

For the second time in a week, a Confederate force captures a Union wagon train trying to supply the Federal force at Camden, Arkansas. This time, the loss forced Union General Frederick Steele to withdraw back to Little Rock.
Steele captured Camden on April 15 as he moved southwest towards Shreveport,...

The Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader. This rather unusual piece of Soviet propaganda was in direct response to President Ronald Reagan’s vigorous attacks on what he called “the evil empire” of the Soviet Union.
In 1983, President Reagan was...

James Richardson walks out of a Florida prison 21 years after being wrongfully convicted of killing his seven children. Special prosecutor Janet Reno agreed to the release after evidence showed that the conviction resulted from misconduct by the prosecutor. In addition, neighbor Betsy Reese had confessed to the crime to...

A Dan-Air Boeing 727 carrying British tourists to the Canary Islands crashes and kills all 146 on board on this day in 1980. This terrible crash came just three years after another even deadlier accident at the Canary Islands airport.
In 1977, a KLM jumbo jet had collided with a Pan...

At Port Said, Egypt, ground is broken for the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch 101 miles across the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat who organized the colossal undertaking, delivered the pickax blow that inaugurated construction.Artificial...

The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit around Earth.The space telescope, conceived in the 1940s, designed in the 1970s, and built in the 1980s, was designed to give astronomers an unparalleled view of the solar system,...

On this day in 1995, the actress Ginger Rogers, best known for the 10 films she made with her dance partner Fred Astaire, dies at the age of 83.
Born in Missouri, Rogers began taking dance and singing lessons as a toddler. By age five, she was appearing in commercials. At...

Daniel Defoe’s fictional work The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is published. The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted island, is based on the experiences of shipwreck victims and of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years on a small...

On April 25, 1917, jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald is born in Newport News, Virginia.
She was called “The First Lady of Song,” an honor whose meaning is captured in a compliment paid to her by the great composer Ira Gershwin: “I never knew how good our songs were until I heard...

The play The Lion of the West opens in New York City. It was the first of many plays, books, and movies celebrating Davy Crockett.
Born in 1786 in Tennessee, Crockett grew up in a poor family that hired him out as a cattle drover at age 12. He eventually...

President Harry S. Truman officially opens the first White House bowling alley on this day in 1947. The two-lane bowling alley, situated in the West Wing, had been constructed earlier that year.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, a group of Truman’s fellow Missourians funded the construction of the bowling alley in honor...

On April 25, 1964, the Toronto Maple Leafs defeat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-0, and win the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup championship, four games to three. The victory marked the Maple Leafs’ third consecutive Stanley Cup victory.
On their way to the 1963-1964 Stanley Cup Finals, Toronto bested the Montreal...

President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that Gen. William Westmoreland will replace Gen. Paul Harkins as head of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) as of June 20. The assignment would put Westmoreland in charge of all American military forces in Vietnam. One of the war’s most controversial figures, General Westmoreland...

Hanoi’s 320th Division drives 5,000 South Vietnamese troops into retreat and traps about 2,500 others in a border outpost northwest of Kontum in the Central Highlands. This was part of the ongoing North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, also known as the “Easter Offensive,” which included an invasion by 120,000 North...

On April 25, 1915, a week after Anglo-French naval attacks on the Dardanelles end in dismal failure, the Allies launch a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Turkish-controlled land mass bordering the northern side of the Dardanelles.
In January 1915, two months after Turkey entered World War I on...

On this day in 1945, eight Russian armies completely encircle Berlin, linking up with the U.S. First Army patrol, first on the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau. Germany is, for all intents and purposes, Allied territory.
The Allies sounded the death knell of their common enemy by...